Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting simultaneous communication of multiple terminals with one or more base stations.
As used herein, the term “mobile device” refers to an electronic device that may be used for voice and/or data communication over a wireless communication network. Examples of mobile devices include cellular phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), handheld devices, wireless modems, laptop computers, personal computers, etc. A mobile device may alternatively be referred to as an access terminal, a mobile terminal, a subscriber station, a mobile station, a remote station, a user terminal, a terminal, a subscriber unit, user equipment, etc.
A wireless communication network may provide communication for a number of mobile devices, each of which may be serviced by a base station. A base station may alternatively be referred to as an access point, a Node B, or some other terminology.
A mobile device may be required to estimate a traffic-to-pilot ratio (TPR) for critical functions of the mobile device. For example, a mobile device may estimate the TPR for the calculation of Linear Minimum Mean Square Error (LMMSE) equalizer coefficients, for the demodulation of high-order constellations, or for the calculation of log-likelihood ratio (LLR). Conventional TPR estimation algorithms use the raw received signal. Using the pre-whitened received signal and the effective channel may result in performance gains for TPR estimation, especially when there is significant correlation between multiple receive antennas.